fa3_cz64_good_morning_astan

[Ralian]

Official thread for all things Good Morning Altistan, my first official mission and the first mission of the Altis Annexed series. I welcome all stories, suggestions, grievances, threats, and ideas you might have for me. So please, by all means, how did it go? Did you get squashed by a falling hunter? And did you find my not-so-hidden borderlands reference?

Current to-fix for next version:
1. Create specific "zones" that might be mined to alleviate some paranoia about IEDs
2. Make logistics a bit less confusing (Move CO to TH, attachments to IFV)
3. Oh yeah, fix the fucking sling loading (even though I spent hours trying to do that)

[Ferrard Carson]

There are a couple things I'd recommend, with the caveat that this was a great outing for a first-ever mission. We've got some best-practices around here that veteran mission-makers mostly follow on autopilot, stuff that tends to make things run a little smoother for everyone involved. Beyond that, I've got my own personal tastes that will show up, so without further ado, here's my recommendations:

• The pacing of the mission is somewhat backwards. You've got a nasty assault on fortified positions across open terrain swarming with enemies at the very start, followed by tons of penny-packet patrols for the remainder of the mission. This is a recipe for lots of early casualties and an hour-plus mission to go afterwards - both things that tend to sap guest enjoyment. Consider reversing this, leaving the airfield lightly defended but putting organized defenses and patrols around Molos proper.
• Double-check the locality of your triggers. Each time a trigger fired, the pop-up hints sounded like they fired about 30 times. Now since it seems like all of your triggers were just "Switch" triggers, there was no problem this time, but if you forget to "isServer" a spawn-related trigger...
• Either switch both Alpha and Bravo to a Mech squad, or leave the IFVs all on their lonesome without any crunchies to haul around. It's logistical hell for a CO to work around multiple elements that have different movement plans, especially when the differing elements' movement plans aren't indicated on the slotting screen.
• The air drop was undeniably cool, but careful with the scripting - my FPS tanked precipitously as the fleet moved in to drop our vehicles.

And now here's my own personal taste:

• Give the crunchies something more to do. After that initial airfield assault, Alpha saw virtually nothing but random stragglers or the odd person in a building, and the infantry more or less just moved about like chess-pieces, not really accomplishing much. Meanwhile, the IFVs are over there racking up 14 kills.
• No Hunters. Fuck Hunters. Fuck non-attachment MRAPs. Fuck 4-man pax vehicles with 14-man squads. There is a reason that when not given direct orders to mount in an MRAP, I pushed my fireteam past them without a second thought, and that reason is logistics. Drop some attachment-style vehicles instead with their own separate crew, or make us a Mech platoon whose IFVs need to be flown in after we secure the airfield.

Again - the caveat to all of the above is that this was a great first mission.

~ Ferrard

[Kefirz]

I agree with Ferrard on the logistics part. Either decide right from the mission start that we are mechanized (1 FT and 1 IFV) or make us motorized (2 FT's), and fly in HEMTT's as transport. The fly in thing looked cool for me and didn't tank my FPS, but maybe someone had a different experience.

This is because I was BSL and I had 2 FT's + 2 IFV's in my command, which was a bit too much, additionally we had confusion because the CO started ordering IFV's around and I ordered them around also, basically they couldn't be in two spots at once and that whole thing was really chaotic and my comms were going wild.

After the airfield assault, Bravo found more work to do in the southern part of Mollos and I wouldn't really say that you should add some more stuff. Because there were EI further south of us and I checked in on MMG2 (or maybe 1), and they were all dead.

I don't know how fast it was for ENG or if you felt that they were slowing things down (personally Bravo just drove around on unchecked roads and we were fine).
But adding a Bobcat to the ENG crew will up the tempo on them and shorten the overall mission time.

Overall, this was a cool mission, but the initial logistics were really painful, but then thankfully the CO took the IFV's under his command and the chatter went down.

[SuicideKing]

Well frankly I enjoyed it - and I was planning to eventually do a similar mission (but with the pacing arrangement Carson's mentioned above) set in the area where "Low tide" is. I haven't made a single complete mission ever though so it'll probably be a while.

I don't think helicopters can lift anything heavier than Humvees/Striders with the sling load option...

BTW Ralian did those Chinooks spawn with slingloaded humvees or did you have them pick them up from somewhere?

[Ralian]

Thanks for the volume of tips and feedback already.

The pacing of the mission is somewhat backwards. You've got a nasty assault on fortified positions across open terrain swarming with enemies at the very start, followed by tons of penny-packet patrols for the remainder of the mission.

I think this ordinarily would be true, but this is why I like Zeus so much: just one person running it can adjust the difficulty to whatever it needs to be. I remember there being basically no casualties after the initial assault - I designed the base to look cool to assault but not be a hard target.

Double-check the locality of your triggers.

Yeah, I fucked something up with one of my triggers. I'll have to test that more on the test server.

my FPS tanked precipitously as the fleet moved in to drop our vehicles.

You have a point with logistics and performance... I think I should maybe sling in only two vehicles instead of four... maybe try and sling in HEMTTs and go for motorization on this mission. You were right, the logistics was a nightmare... I'll keep hunters to attachments (I pictured more of a convoy going on into town).

After that initial airfield assault, Alpha saw virtually nothing but random stragglers or the odd person in a building, and the infantry more or less just moved about like chess-pieces, not really accomplishing much. Meanwhile, the IFVs are over there racking up 14 kills.

This was a serious problem. I think I need to reduce the number of IFVs to one and spread my targets out more.

Because there were EI further south of us and I checked in on MMG2 (or maybe 1), and they were all dead.

MMG1 (if that was who was to the south) died because they decided to hold off all the enemy reinforcements with just themselves. I think there actually probably should have been more reinforcements to roll in for the teams to have to close in on in the town. But that's just me.

But adding a Bobcat to the ENG crew

Now there's an idea.

BTW Ralian did those Chinooks spawn with slingloaded humvees or did you have them pick them up from somewhere?

They were spawned that way. Check out the sling loading module in the "misc" submenu. Speaking of which...

I don't think helicopters can lift anything heavier than Humvees/Striders with the sling load option...

They can't. But I wonder if I can spawn them with just about anything pre-slingloaded?

Anyways, thanks for the feedback again. Hopefully I can work out the problems with this mission.

[SuicideKing]

They were spawned that way. Check out the sling loading module in the "misc" submenu. Speaking of which...

Ah okay, I was trying once and I couldn't figure it out. Thanks!

They can't. But I wonder if I can spawn them with just about anything pre-slingloaded?

Wouldn't know that. I do know that in Insurgency, Ghosthawks can lift HEMTTs with scripting - Kefirz (or was it Toaster?) was ferrying one HEMTT around last Tuesday.

[Sparks]

So, from one of Bravo's ARs' perspective:

- There was cover-ish stuff by the airfield, and we had those runway markers to bipod on and suppress while everyone else ran at the bad men. We didn't take casualties until we hit the buildings. Alpha came in from another direction and honestly, I remember thinking that wasn't a great plan while someone (bodge?) was yelling at me over teamspeak to stop shooting them with my AR...

- The airdrop was cool... and then you dropped hunters on us from 50-60m up and it was like we were being bombed with very unconventional ordinance. Apart from the point that it looked silly (a hunter not exploding from hitting the ground like that when they'll blow up if you bump a fencepost too hard? Meh), that's not an LZ, it's a DZ and you *really* need to keep clear of it.

- I really hate driving hunters. And it's tempting fate to ask me to do it. How we didn't all die before getting to our dismount point I don't know.

- Some of those civilians look awfully suspicious.

- The ending was kindof an anticlimax.

- It felt really easy. There's a narrow enough band between "too easy" and "died before we got out of the briefing", especially since we never really see the buildup before it hits us, but this could do with a nudge, especially after the initial airfield assault.


That aside, I had fun, so it's a success already...

[audiox]

Just gonna say that i really like the Hunters. They are something different, and forces an FTL to think/act differently. Which i like.
The "lets just have them all shipped off in the cattle wagons for convenience sake"-approach is boring and does not really give us anything to do besides mount/dismount. Hunters force you to think differently about what you can and cannot do on the battlefield and that is a good thing.


As is, dropping in a squads worth of Hunters is both cool, and provides for a mobile squad that can both screen their own advance and approach the city from a different angle both fast and with good fire support. Using a HEMTT would just be another exercise in "dismount and march that way" and we already have plenty of those. Variety IS the spice of life, and also the spice of playing Arma, lets not just throw that away because some people find them tricky to deal with. Or, in the established tone. Fuck not using arma assets that are fun, powerful, different, and give us other challenges than managing people on foot. And fuck always putting us in HEMTTS and giving us absolutely no sense of agency whilst on the move. It is a different challenge, and we should fucking have those, for fucks sake.


Also Sparks, you have to work pretty hard to blow up a Hunter from just driving it, they tolerate quite a lot of punishment. Offroads and the civvie trucks blow up at a heartbeat though.

[Sparks]

Also Sparks, you have to work pretty hard to blow up a Hunter from just driving it, they tolerate quite a lot of punishment.

No, you have to work pretty hard to blow up a Hunter from just driving it.
I on the other hand, have managed to:

• drive the wrong way around the entire Race Thunder course during an afterparty without noticing I was going the wrong way
• somersault an MBT down a hill
• reverse over several of my team while charging forwards during a run of Room Service
• get an entire convoy lost and then stuck before we got out of the base we spawned in during a run of Lightning Strike
• spontaneously explode during a run of Salt Riders before we ever got within half a map of OPFOR

And that's just the stuff I've done on Folk servers. Things with wheels and me do not mix well in Arma...

[Kefirz]

Or, in the established tone. Fuck not using arma assets that are fun, powerful, different, and give us other challenges than managing people on foot. And fuck always putting us in HEMTTS and giving us absolutely no sense of agency whilst on the move. It is a different challenge, and we should fucking have those, for fucks sake.

I agree with you 100%, but you were the lucky one with 2 Hunter HMG's, the other FT had 2 unarmed ones, or cattle transport

So, in the mission, do we give everyone a HMG? (think of the OP-ness, but maybe ammo can be reduced)
Or we give everyone unarmed HEMTT's and make logistics REALLY easier. (Which needs to be done)
Or we go in as a proper mechanized unit (1 FT + 1 IFV) and reduce the logistics, while maintaining firepower.

Additionally, we really cannot slingload more vehicles than we already did so we cannot provide hunters for everyone.


Personally, I think that we should be mechanized (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and maybe with even Delta squad)
Attachments that are coming in by heli (MMG, MAT, HAT) get a slingloaded hunter. But the ENG squad (which is also in the heli) gets a slingloaded bobcat.